Revelation & Concealment

Windows to the Soul

I can't honestly say that I really knew her.
It was like glimpsing shadows in the pitch of night
where form and features part and then come together
and appear to be one due to the lack of light.

Her eyes were a depressed revelation of blue.
The windows of her house stood lonely and alone,
framed in the center of mellifluous milieu
where spirit was broken by a heart turned to stone.

They used to call her Lady Luck when times were young
and sugary kisses paved pathways to a dream,
but those days of beauty shall remain unsung
beneath the tears of torment that turned into stream.

Still waters run deep in the weep of the ocean,
in the jagged scars of fear that furrow the face,
beyond a mountain of heartache and emotion
where the heart and the mind seek a separate space.

The soul bleeds with its dowry of merciless pain,
an endless chain of tears to imprison the heart
in tenebrous tumult and resilient rain �
Such a sad flower, with its petals pulled apart!

Her eyes were a depressed revelation of blue
but concealed everything in the wall behind;
and no one really knew her, though they thought they knew.
She walked alone down the corridors of her mind.

I hear her footfalls in the echoes of the night
when sad stillness thunders in the sky overhead.
When the shadows find sway in the soft streaks of light,
I can feel her breathing by the side of my bed.

They say she's my mother, but I never knew her.
There are no roots, no tree, no family, no me.
When the veil of morning begins to softly stir,
a reticent river empties into the sea.

They say she's my mother, but my mother has died.

Reviews

[Forest Green]

Deep water intoned by the glassy, glossy, then darkening surface, mentioning one by one the hidden effects of life, love, person, singularity of life gone by; missed and wished for, by the hand of a true writer.

Beautiful.

[Susan]

WOW! a very powerful and haunting poem.. I could feel your emotions here and identify with them..I'm speechless... this is just mindblowing and awesome.. beautiful writing.

[Pax Analog]

Somber elegiac eloquence. Not completely clear whether mother has literally died, or psychologically died. Knowing a little of your personal history, I assume the latter has been true for some time.

"The soul bleeds with its dowry of merciless pain,/an endless chain of tears to imprison the heart/in tenebrous tumult and resilient rain �/Such a sad flower, with its petals pulled apart!" These lines are a Poe-like tell-tale heart ripped out of the chest, entombed in aborted emotion.

"They say she's my mother, but I never knew her./There are no roots, no tree, no family, no me./When the veil of morning begins to softly stir,/a reticent river empties into the sea." Personally, I know some of this sensibility, tho' it was more one of strangely arbitrary black mud, than such a sad orphaning -- tho' beauty is regained in the latter lines.

If there is a silver lining in severed bloodline roots, it is that the will to individuation, and the discovery of original Love carries that much more strength and poignance. "Whatever doesn't kill me, makes me stronger," Nietzsche famously said.

You have the insights and grace required to transcend the short straws you were dealt parentally. And your honesty in confessing the pain of primal maternal loss, and your sensitive enquiry into highlights of her earlier life, is a keystone of your depth and beauty -- of soul, and of expression.

[David Lewis Paget]

Very sad that such a potentially close relationship could be so enigmatic. The visissitudes of life can so stultify emotional responses that it becomes impossible to form close relationships, even with those near and dear to us - the concentration is on the hurt, or that person or partner who committed the original unforgiveable sin. Everything else drops out of our line of vision, children are pushed aside, friends neglected. The result is a walking shadow, unknown and unknowable. You have dwelt on this subject at length, and as a result have managed to fill in a background that many of us will be able to relate to.
David.